This next term I’d like to commit to spending more time thinking deeply about what I’m teaching and work on developing increasingly flexible mental models so that I can respond and refine my lessons more sensitively in the moment.

I feel like this is a key idea in Claire Sealy’s blogpost. Carefully planning not just what we’ll teach next but also thinking deeply about possible misconceptions and building in strategic retrieval opportunities.

Reading through the blogpost really made me reflect on a recent Substack post by Sarah Cottinghatt: cognitivecoaching.substack.com/p/dont-use-p...

In the post she discusses how teachers who have spent time developing flexible mental models can engage more sensitively to unexpected situations.

This. But not just for the early years. Even as children grow there is space for both. We don’t need to have a dichotomy. It can be equally true that children need some more formal learning alongside child-initiated play. Just perhaps with varying ratios as children develop.

I haven’t been able to get my hand on it yet! I’m really interested in reading the section about complementary sequencing and flexible connectivity. It sounds exactly like what I want to wrap my head around.